1/11/2008 @ 6:00PM

Sun Plans To Close Its Data Centers

For a company that sells and manages servers,
Sun Microsystems
is in the midst of an unexpected move: getting rid of its own server farms.

In a blog post Thursday, Sun’s
data center architect, Brian Cinque, wrote that the company plans to cut the size of its internal data centers in half by 2013, and eliminate them altogether by 2015.

In an interview, Sun’s chief technology officer of information technology, John Dutra, balked at committing to the 2015 goal, and cautioned that Cinque’s post was more of a “vision” than a “tactical plan.” But Sun’s drive to reduce its in-house computing hardware is real. In five years, Dutra says, more efficient servers and virtualization–the conversion of multiple computers into software that can be run on a single machine–will allow Sun to do away with five of its eight data centers, reducing both the centers’ square footage and data consumption by around 50%.

Eventually, Dutra says, Sun plans to reduce those numbers to zero, renting out the company’s processing and storage capabilities from external data centers.

Sun’s announcement marks the information technology industry’s latest step toward “utility computing,” a grid system in which companies pipe in data processing and storage from faraway server farms, says Nicholas Carr, author of TheBig Switch, a book on utility computing published earlier this week. By moving IT infrastructure to a centralized computing “power plant” rather than hosting their own processing and storage, Carr says, companies are able to buy computing resources at lower prices and avoid large initial technology investments.

“This is a very real sign of the shift from the private data center to the public grid for computing,” says Carr. “It means that Sun expects the utility computing grid will be mature enough by 2015 to handle any type of software that the company runs.”

Major software companies, including
Oracle
,
IBM
,
Google
and even
Amazon.com
, are all beginning to offer their own forms of utility computing applications, such as software-as-a-service and rented storage and processing power.

Sun itself hosts Network.com, a pay-per-use online service offering mathematical and engineering applications launched last March and hosted on what the company calls the Sun Grid. Even as the company reduces the amount of hardware used to host its internal IT needs, it still plans to maintain the data centers necessary to host services for other companies.

Still, revamping its internal server systems could save Sun money and create less of an environmental footprint. More important, says Carr, Sun’s other motive may be inspiring an industry shift–one that could mean more high-end server sales and reverse a growing trend toward sales of cheaper Windows and Linux servers.

“Sun specializes in high-end gear, and somebody has to supply the computers that power this utility computing,” says Carr. “It wants to be a leader in building and managing these very powerful, centralized computing operations for other companies.”

Despite the consolidation of hardware that grid computing could represent, Sun’s Dutra isn’t worried about the company’s sales. “We’ll sell servers to private data centers and to hosted data centers as well,” he says. “From a hardware standpoint, it doesn’t really matter where the servers are.”